Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:11:00 GMT
The last few months have been kind of quiet here for two simple reasons:
- I’ve been completely swamped with launching something new at work. That’s finally done.
- Every spare non-work minute has been spent in my back yard, working on The Project That Won’t Die. I’m re-terracing the lawn, putting in a big planter/retaining wall thing with a couple sets of steps, putting in a new paver patio, and then re-planting the whole lawn. The end is finally in sight there, too.
Basically, I’ve been alternating between not having anything interesting to say and having lots of things to say that I couldn’t really talk about.
Hopefully that’ll be changing soon. I’m changing projects at work; I was the lead for the Google download servers (need a new copy of Earth, Toolbar, Sketchup, Gears, etc?), and I’m going to be taking over a new service soon. The new job’s going to involve a lot of travel; I’m going to be in either NYC or Mountain View at least once per month for the rest of the year, and will probably be visiting at least 2 other offices for one of my side projects. Considering that I’ve only flown 4 or 5 times for Google in the 2.5 years I’ve been here, this’ll be a big change in pace. The job’s starting quickly–I first heard about this yesterday, and I’m already booked to fly to New York next Monday. I’ve never actually been there before, so it should be entertaining. I’ll be stuck in the office for most of the time, but I’ll have a couple free hours per day to wander around and see the sights. I’ll try to hit a couple of the tourist high points this time, and then branch out on future trips.
Tags google, travel, work | 1 comment
Posted by Scott Laird
Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:37:17 GMT
Soo Valley, near Whistler, B.C.
I spent Thursday and Friday in Whistler along with a few hundred co-workers, enjoying the Seattle version of Google’s annual ski trip. I took the opportunity to go snowmobiling for the first time, and took my camera along.
I need to find another excuse to go play in the snow with my camera; that was too much fun.
Tags google, snow, travel, whistler | 1 comment
Posted by Scott Laird
Sat, 14 Apr 2007 22:48:20 GMT
After 15 days on the road, I’m finally back home. We drove down to San Diego for my sister-in-law’s wedding, and then drove back slowly, spending a couple days in Sequoia National Park along the way. I really enjoyed the park; after spending a week split between LA and San Diego, it was nice to get away from the crowds. Not that the park was completely empty–we saw 3 of these guys:
From a photographic standpoint, the trip was a success. I’m not going to claim that I produced any great art, but I enjoyed myself and gave my new 5D and 100-400 a workout. I feel like a photographer again, after months of almost no photography at all. I probably went a bit overboard this time–according to Lightroom, I shot almost 4,100 frames. Most of those were kids-at-Disneyland snapshots or wedding pictures, but there were a few that stood out for me:
Strangely, most of my favorite shots were birds; I’m not quite sure how that happened. I’ve never been big on birds before. I’ll post more details once I’ve finished unpacking, and once my last few pictures have finished uploading to Flickr.
Tags photography, travel, vacation | 9 comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 11 Sep 2006 03:02:44 GMT
I’m in Mountain View this week for a few meetings, and my social calendar is pretty empty. Is anything happening this week?
Tags california, google, travel | 2 comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 31 Jul 2006 14:48:07 GMT
I’m on vacation this week, traveling in Oregon. I’ll be checking my mail from time to time, but don’t expect a quick response.
Tags oregon, travel, vacation
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 27 Feb 2006 15:31:11 GMT
My stint with Google in California is finally complete, and I’m working my way back home. Of course, I’m not exactly doing it in the most direct manner possible–instead of flying back, we’re doing the Big Family Road Trip.
Sophia and Gabe at San Juan Capistrano
My wife’s sister lives in San Diego, so my wife and kids drove down last week to see her. They stopped for the night in Mountain View, and then we all drove down to San Diego together for the long weekend. We took the kids to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and then I drove back to Mountain View for my last week. It’s a fun drive, all 470 miles worth, through LA’s rush hour. It took me 9:45 to get home.
Then, after a few days’ work, I took Friday off this week and drove down to San Diego for a couple days on the beach with everyone. We took the kids to see Capistrano, and then took off yesterday morning for home. We stopped in Sacramento last night; according to Google, we have around 760 miles to go.
Tags california, driving, travel | 8 comments | 4 trackbacks
Posted by Scott Laird
Sat, 21 Jan 2006 22:18:13 GMT
I’m currently somewhere over Oregon, flying from the bay area back to Seattle. This is the 6th flight that I’ve been on in the last 3 months, and the very first time that I’ve even bothered pulling my laptop out of its bag. Since the flight between SEA and SJC is only in the air for 90 minutes or so, I haven’t really seen the point–I’d rather spend the time reading, listening to my iPod, or sleeping.
In fact, the fact that it’s such a short flight factored into my shopping when I picked up a new PowerBook a couple months ago. If I’d really expected to use my computer on the plane, I probably would have picked up a 15” PowerBook, but I figured that I could cope with a few computer-free hours per month and bought the 17” model instead. I’m really happy with my choice, all things considered–the screen on the new 17 is amazing–it’s basically a 20” LCD shrunk down to 17”. My old 15” PowerBook was really most useful when it was sitting on a desk plugged into a real monitor, while I’ve never even bothered to plug my 17” into anything, even when I’ve had a spare monitor or two sitting right next to the laptop.
So, when I bought the laptop, I figured that the extra screen real estate was worth an extra couple pounds and a general inability to use the laptop while traveling. Frankly, the 15” was never very comfortable to use on planes anyway, so I doubted that I’d miss anything. If I’d really wanted to work on planes, I’d have picked up a 12” PowerBook and found a way to cope with their limitations.
Anyway, here I am, sitting on a dinky little Alaska Air MD-80 with my laptop out, and somehow, even though MD-80s are generally cramped even without an oversized laptop, somehow there’s actually more then enough room here to work. It fills up my entire tray, and it helps that my seat is reclined a bit and there’s no one in front of me (or next to me–no one in their right mind flies at 6:30 on a Saturday morning), but it’s actually pretty comfortable. I could probably get 3 or 4 hours worth of work done this way, if my plane wasn’t landing in 30 minutes.
Now back to the one remaining bug in my new Typo caching code…
Tags apple, powerbook, travel | 1 comment | 2 trackbacks
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 28 Nov 2005 04:52:17 GMT
I have arrived! I’m in Mountain View now, and will be for about 4 weeks. Hopefully I’ll have time to post a bit more after I’ve tracked down dinner.
Tags california, travel, work | 2 comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Thu, 10 Nov 2005 05:16:15 GMT
I just made it into my hotel in Sunnyvale. The Grand Hotel seems nice enough–the rooms are big, it comes with free breakfast, and they don’t seem to charge for IP. There’s no wireless access, but there’s a convenient jack in the wall and an Ethernet cable in the desk. Of course, it’d be a bit more convenient if there was a working DHCP server on the network, but I wouldn’t be here if that sort of thing was really a problem for me.
It looks like I’ll be meeting a few people for dinner tomorrow at Kal’s BBQ on Matilda in Sunnyvale around 7:00; feel free to drop by if you’re interested in saying hi.
Finally, I’m still planning on putting out another Typo release tonight, but it’ll be another hour or two.
Tags personal, travel | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Tue, 08 Nov 2005 03:47:52 GMT
I’m going to be in Sunnyvale for a while later this week, and I’m completely free on Thursday evening. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Tags personal, travel | 6 comments
